‘The American public often only found out that troops were stationed in Syria because of leaks to the media or quiet announcements long after they arrived.’
Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP

Donald Trump unexpectedly announced that the US would be pulling its troops out of Syria on Wednesday, and the entire national security establishment exploded in anger that one of our many wars may be ending.

Members of Congress, like Republican senators Bob Corker and Lindsey Graham – who have never met a war they didn’t like – are furious that Congress wasn’t consulted in the decision. Members of the media have proclaimed that the “winners” here are Assad and Putin, despite the fact that the stated mission in Syria was never to fight them in the first place. And pundit after pundit derided that this decision is a win for terrorists, with no thought to whether we are creating just as many terrorists by being there at all.

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Lost in the discussion was any semblance of questioning whether it’s in America’s interests to have thousands of troops fighting and dying in yet another Middle Eastern country. Does anyone know what the long-term military strategy in Syria would be, or how we would ever exit?

Does anyone care that many legal experts – regardless of how evil Assad or Isis was and is – think sending troops into Syria was illegal, given that Congress never debated or approved sending troops there? Should we fight in Syria forever, just because Russia also thinks we should leave? What percentage of the American public even knew to begin with over 2,000 troops have been on the ground in Syria occupying a third of the country for years?

In fact, just six days ago the Washington Post reported that US troops would be stationed in Syria “indefinitely” and now occupy over one third of the country. The Post referred to it as our “hidden war in Syria”. No one seemed to care about that at the time, but now that troops may be coming home, everyone is upset.

Maybe if Congress has not used the last decade to totally abdicate its constitutional responsibility to debate and approve of wars the US is involved in, and if they were actually up front to the American people about the extreme costs of fighting yet another war, they would have a leg to stand on. But their stance seems to now be: we only get upset when troops get to come home without our approval, not when they are deployed in yet another war zone.

If Congress wants to keep the forever war in the Middle East going for another generation, then there’s an easy solution: vote on it! Congress can authorize a military engagement anytime they want. But you can bet they won’t do it; they don’t want to be on the hook for when it inevitably turns into a quagmire costing the US billions in blood and treasure, just like every single other war we have been involved in has been for the last decade and a half.

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And then there’s the pundit class: It’s amazing that on the one hand, everyone considers Trump a know-nothing, unstable maniac (a totally reasonable opinion!), yet are perfectly okay with him leading the US military into yet another long term military engagement with countless incredibly complicated geopolitical factors at play.

Agreeing that US troops shouldn’t be indefinitely occupying Syria is not defense of Trump. His foreign policy is, of course, just as much a disaster as his domestic policies. He has markedly increased the number of drone strikes in the region from the Obama administration with hardly any scrutiny – despite the fact that rules of engagement have been loosened and more civilians are at risk of a fiery death than ever before.

He has backed an appalling war in Yemen leading to the world’s largest famine, and his administration is also itching for a larger war with Iran. And his military budget has exploded. (Speaking of, does anyone in Congress have an opinion on the fact that we seem to be engaged in a secret war in Somalia now, again without any public debate?)

But what if, on balance, Trump actually made the right decision here, regardless of how he came to it or how he announced it? It is mind boggling that we, as a nation, are unable to appreciate that thousands of Americans will now no longer be in harm’s way, fighting a war that Congress never debated and that much of American public never even knew was happening.

‘After Donald Trump unexpectedly announced that the US would be pulling its troops out of Syria on Wednesday, and the entire national security establishment exploded in anger.’ Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

Currently, we now have men and women whoweren’t even born when the 9/11 attacks occurred eligible for combat in the Middle East under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was passed to fight al-Qaida in Afghanistan. They are stationed in too many countries to count, fighting enemies that didn’t exist when the law was passed. In fact, one soldier who was just one year old when the 9/11 attacks occurred was just killed in Afghanistan earlier this month.

It should go without saying that Assad is a murderous dictator and Isis is completely depraved. That doesn’t mean anyone against more war in Syria remotely supports these horrible people or doesn’t care for the plight of the Syrian people.

The entire post-9/11 military strategy has been an abject failure. It has cost trillions of dollars, millions of lives, and there is no indication anyone is better off, whether it’s the American public or innocent civilians in the Middle East. In the meantime, we’ve engendered hatred from multiple generations of Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis and many others.

You can still despise Trump just as much as yesterday, but the fact that some of our troops are coming home – at least for now – is a good thing.